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Obama May Have the Balls to Raise Your Taxes

In looking at the problem of ballooning deficits, President Obama is not ruling out tax hikes for households making less than $250,000. I, for one, I’m happy about that.

Obviously, in America, “taxes” is a dirty word, so this concession is going to prove pretty powerful campaign ammo, both this November and in 2012. But I think that’s kind of why I admire it. Now, I’m not suggesting that simply because something is unpopular it is somehow noble, but in the endless sports radio-style babble of Washington punditry (which is now given over entirely to political point scoring rather than actual policy) this thoughtful reconsideration of a hard reality seems… grown-up.

I don’t think there’s been anything more poisonous to political discourse over the last 15 years than the addition of “flip-flop” to the campaign arsenal. That reconsidering our positions and adjusting our thinking based on new facts has somehow become a political liability speaks to how low we’ve fallen. But you know all this. Sigh.

Anyway, taxes. I think we should all be paying more of them, you know, for roads and social infrastructure and shit (rather than just letting the “free” market solve all our problems)… But then I’m a socialist from totalitarian communofascist Canada. What’s that? Canada actually has more economic freedom than the US while at the same time having universal health care? Well, fuck.